What Is Podcast Hosting?

They are built to meet the high bandwidth and storage needs that a podcast needs in order for listeners to be able to stream or download podcast episodes quickly and reliably.

What is Podbean?

Podbean is user-friendly and offers just about every service that a podcaster could need, so it’s a good option whether you’re brand new to podcasting or experienced.

Podbean’s core service is podcast hosting. All this means is that you can upload your podcast episodes to Podbean, and when someone wants to listen to them, they’ll download or stream the data from Podbean.

You’ll be able to publish your podcast to other platforms like iTunes and Google Play, but those platforms don’t host the episodes for you, they essentially just link back to your podcast host (Podbean in this case).

On top of hosting, Podbean has features to help you get new listeners, monetize your podcast, and even create a basic website.

Who is Podbean For?

Podbean offers 4 different plans for aspiring and existing podcasters.

Whether you’re just in the planning stages of a new podcast, or already have a popular podcast, there’s likely a plan that will work for you.

We’ll break down the plans further down the page.

A Brief History of Podbean

Podbean isn’t the most transparent company, so there’s not too much public information on their staff.

However, we do know that the company is based out of Wilmington, Delaware and that they’ve been offering podcast hosting since 2006.

In that time, over 250,000 podcasts have been hosted on Podbean.

I haven’t heard too many negative stories about Podbean, which is a good sign. So despite the lack of public information, it’s clear that Podbean is a long-standing service for podcasters who must be doing something right.

Features Offered by Podbean

As I mentioned, Podbean offers a ton of features. It’s an all-in-one platform for podcasters.

You may not need all of these features, but it’s nice to know that they are there if needed. I will break down each feature so you can see if it fits your needs.

Website Builder & Themes

All Podbean accounts come with a free subdomain of your choice, provided it’s not taken (i.e. CoolPodcastName.podbean.com).

This page contains all your podcast information, and visitors can listen to your episodes.

There’s not a lot in terms of content you can do beyond that, it’s not designed to be a blog or large website with many pages.

How Customizable Is Podbean?

You are, however, able to choose a theme, and then edit some basic styling options like:

Header image

Background image

Theme color

Font color

Link color

Title color

Font size

Font style

Podcast player presence

Episode count-per-page

Audio player color

Video player color

Overall,this is a good basic web presence for your podcast to live but isn’t enough to build a full web presence and business on.

It’s good to get started, particularly if you don’t have web development skills (no coding involved at all), but later on you might want to migrate off.

Finally, a podcast generating revenue should have its own custom domain. You can buy one from any domain registrar, and then forward your Podbean website to it in your account settings.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Google’s SEO algorithms change and develop rapidly.

If you’re not familiar with it, SEO is the practice of optimizing your content to help people find them through search engines.

In the case of podcasts, you’re not too worried about optimizing for Google (although that’s a plus), but you do want to optimize for podcast search engines.

Podbean has their own (type in a podcast topic on their site’s search bar to test), and so do all the other major podcast directories like iTunes and Google Play.

How Do Search Engines Find My Podcast?

These search engines work based on the title and description of your podcast episodes and are pretty straightforward.

Podbean also has a basic “SEO Meta Tags” plugin, that will allow you to add basic tags for search engines.

It’s not incredibly difficult to do, nor is it unique to Podbean, but it’s the minimum you should do for your podcast.

Podbean’s Mobile Application

Podbean has highly rated mobile apps on both iOS and Android.

These are designed mostly for listening but still have all the core publishing features as well.

The mobile app has an appealing and user-friendly interface.

You can record directly through the Podbean app (although I wouldn’t recommend it in most cases), and then upload through the mobile app as well.

Video Podcast Support

In addition to audio podcasts, certain plans on Podbean support video podcasts.

Think about it – can your podcast do without a video?

This isn’t needed for most podcasts, but depending on your topic it may be useful.

If your audience also might enjoy seeing you or your screen during episodes, it may be something to keep in mind when picking a plan.

Video podcasts are generally good if you’re trying to build a personal brand (so now people can see the person behind the voice), or for topics where body language and demonstrations are useful (although not necessary).

Marketing & Monetization

While Podbean won’t hold your hand and do everything for you, they do offer a few helpful features:

Automatic social sharing – Once you connect your major social profiles, you can tell Podbean to automatically share new episodes through them.

Easy embedding – You can copy and paste the provided embed code for each episode into WordPress, any social media network, or any website you own to share episodes.

Featured opportunities – Podbean features new podcasts in their search results to users they think would like them. This isn’t reliable, but could be a nice boost.

Monetization – Podbean makes it easy to add advertisements to your podcasts, even if you’re not big enough to get a sponsor. In addition, you can sell premium content, or set up a patron system on certain plans.

Podbean Reviews by Our Community

Most Helpful Reviews

Podbean has an excuse for a support team. Online chat people were in educated as to how the site works, and thru their tampering deleted valuable files. No direct contact.

If you have a problem or question you are continually referred to tutorial sites that have missing steps and fail to function. They are quick to act if you threaten payment or ask for credit, but have no problem leaving problems fester for months.

Podbean Hosting Plans

Here’s a quick comparison table of the main feature differences and prices, and then we’ll look at who each plan is best for.

Free Plan

Unlimited Audio

Unlimited Plus

Business

Price (per month)

$0.00

$9.00

$29.00

$99.00

Storage

5 hours

Unlimited

Unlimited

Unlimited

Bandwidth

100 GB

Unmetered

Unmetered

Unmetered

Video Support

No

No

Yes

Yes

Custom Domain

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Multiple Admins

No

No

No

Yes

The right plan for you will depend upon your needs.

Who Are Podbeans Plans Best Suited For?

Some offer better value than others:

Free plan – Best for brand new podcasters who just want to learn and don’t expect many (if any) to listen to their podcasts yet. Can always upgrade later.

Unlimited audio – The best plan for most solo podcasters. Has the majority of important features for a reasonable price, enough for any podcast starting off.

Unlimited plus – Only better than the unlimited audio plan if you need one of the few extra features like video podcasts or creating a patron program.

Business – The best plan once you reach the stage of needing to hire help and having multiple people working on the podcast.

One final note is what “unlimited storage” and “unmetered bandwidth” really mean. You don’t have infinite storage data of course, but you have as much as any podcast could reasonably be expected to need.

Resource Needs

As long as you’re not trying to abuse the platform, you should have more than enough bandwidth and storage.

However, note that on regular web hosts, you might run into space issues if you started hosting podcasts because they are not designed for the storage and bandwidth needs of media like podcasts.

That’s why choosing a podcast hosting service is a good idea.

How Does Podbean Work?

I set up a new Podbean account while researching for this review to make sure the platform hadn’t changed from when I last used it.

The whole process takes under 20 minutes, and there’s really only a few main steps.

1 – Pick a Custom Sub-Domain

To start with, you pick your custom sub-domain (which you can later point to a custom domain):

Setting up your custom sub-domain.

Within seconds, your basic site will be created with the default theme:

My quick set-up podcast site.

2 – Change or Customize Your Layout

Back in your account backend, you can change the layout to any one of several themes:

A variety of themes to choose from.

They all have modern designs and are responsive, which is important since many visitors may be on mobile devices.

3 – Upload and Publish Your First Episode

From there, you’re ready to upload your first episode (if you have it recorded).

After the upload is complete, you’ll be asked to decide on the:

Title

Episode description

Monetization options (if any)

And then you hit “publish” when done.

If you’re fast this only takes a few minutes.

4 – Your Podcast Is Ready To Be Listened To

From there, visit your subdomain and you’ll see your podcast’sRSS feed at the top. Copy this down somewhere, it’s what you’ll submit to all the popular podcast apps like iTunes.

They have a 99.9% uptime commitment, anytime money back guarantee, and great security measures.

Blubrry

Blubrry is another popular and established podcast host like Podbean. They offer WordPress integration and other powerful features.

Blubrry isn’t feature-less either.

However, it’s also more expensive for most.

LiquidWeb

LiquidWeb is a premium web host that offers immense storage and speed. Although they’re not designed for podcasts specifically, their plans can easily handle serving one. However, they are more expensive.

LiquidWeb’s plans are more suited for those in need of premium resources.

It’s the best option if you have a podcast already generating money, and you want to grow a website alongside the podcast.

Conclusions

When I started up a podcast years ago, I was overwhelmed by everything, and Podbean is likely the simplest solution to get your podcasts hosted.

Overall I’m happy to recommend Podbean to new podcasters in particular, although it’s still a good option for experienced podcasters looking to quickly get another one up and running.

If you’d like to give them a shot, start with the free plan and see if you agree with my review. Click the button at the right to go check out Podbean.

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